10 Year Anniversary Trip: Colorado

We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on July 30th. How in the world have we already been married that long? It seems like just yesterday we had our wedding. Then we blinked and here we are.

When we started planning our 10 year anniversary, we were gonna go big. We had planned an Alaskan cruise in the summer so we could see the glaciers on a balcony room. But alas, COVID19 hit, and cruises were suspended. And while they are somewhat back in business, it was too late, and we weren’t qualified to go anyway. So we started looking for something else. The US offers so many options when it comes to travel, and one thing on my bucket list is to go to Glacier National Park. So we started planning that trip, but there were NO places to stay during our dates. We really couldn’t believe it. Plans kept falling through, and we finally just decided to go to Colorado. We love Colorado. We’ve been there many, many times. But this time we decided to do things we’ve never done before.

We once again planned the trip solely on credit card points—we’d been saving them ever since our Europe trip. We booked our flights, and a week before we were to leave, we got Covid. Womp, womp. The trip was postponed. But we got flight credit, and instead of having to fly out of Tulsa, we could fly out of our local airport for even cheaper. Yay!

Traveling while leaving the kid at home was different for us. It was like packing for 3 people instead of just 2, but we did it. This is the first trip that we’ve ever left him for that long. I was a little nervous to leave him, but I fully trusted both sets of grandparents to rock the babysitting gig. I’m so grateful that we didn’t have to worry about them.

Tyler had never been to Colorado in the summer (other than when he traveled to the Denver office for work—and that does not even count). So we decided to make a road trip of it (after we flew to Denver).

Flying was exactly the same with the exception of now having to wear a mask. But all other regulations were just that. We flew out of our little local airport and directly into Denver.

C O L O R A D O  S P R I N G S

The view outside the front door of our hotel on Sunday morning.

We drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver, after stopping for a very late lunch. We checked into our hotel since we stayed up by the Air Force base. Then we decided to head down to Garden of the Gods. I was surprised at how hot it was in Denver and Colorado Springs. I was hoping for cooler weather, but at least we didn’t have much humidity.

On Sunday morning, we got up and headed to Pike’s Peak. I’ve been up Pike’s Peak several times, but every time, my dad or someone else was driving. I didn’t really want that stress on us, as I knew that we would be driving a lot later. So we decided to take the newly revamped Cog Railway up.

For reference, Colorado Springs sits at approximately 6,000 feet above sea level, and Pike’s Peak is over 14,000 feet. It was a climb. It took about an hour to get up to the top, and we had 40 minutes to look around. They just built a brand new visitors center up there, which was nice! It was rather chilly, and I’m glad Tyler and I packed our “Switzerland coats” for this excursion.

The trip down was a little longer than the ride up, and gratefully so. I did not want to be rolling down the tracks at a high speed. Haha. At this point in the trip, the ascent to that elevation really affected me. My head was pounding, and while I had already consumed over 60 oz of water by 10 am, it did absolutely nothing for me. My head hurt so bad that I thought I was going to throw up. I couldn’t really even tell Tyler what I wanted for lunch. I just wanted to go lay in bed.

He was gracious about it, and I did just that for the rest of the day. I felt better after a little nap, but my head was still pounding. I will say, this was the only headache I had on the entire trip, but it was sure a doozy.

Monday, I got up feeling a lot better and we headed onto Cañon City. But I’ll share more about that in the next blog entry.

Girls Trip 2018

Last spring, my mom called me one day and asked if I wanted to go on a girls trip with her.  Did I even have to think about that answer? NO!  My answer was an obvious yes.

Tyler and I were planning our Europe trip, and she and my dad had already committed to taking care of Scout for us.  So I knew that we would have to plan around that.  Since I was getting emails from Scott's Cheap Flights Premium Membership, I suggested Ireland since that was the most recent in my inbox.

My mom doesn't like to fly.  So she politely turned me down.  About a week or so later, she came back to me and said that she wanted to go to Colorado to see her brothers and their families. If you tell me we're going to Colorado in the summer, I'm not going to turn you down.

Wait....wait....wait...

If you tell me we're going to Colorado, I'm not going to turn you down.  Colorado is probably my favorite place in the US.  Granted, I haven't been to all 50 states, but Colorado holds a lot of memories and pieces of my heart.

We went in August, and we left on a Monday morning, so my mom came to OKC on Sunday afternoon.  I did convince her to fly, and we ended up both flying roundtrip on Southwest for less than $200 total.  Y'all...if you don't take advantage of Southwest's sales, you're missing out.

We took a very early flight out, which had us at the airport at 5:30 am or something crazy.  Neither one of us normally sees that time of day. HA! But it was worth it.  We got to Denver at 7-something that morning, got our rental car, and started driving towards Colorado Springs.

I had put the car rental in my name, thinking we could do some switching around if we needed to.  We even talked about putting both of our names on the reservation.  However, that cost an extra $25 PER DAY!  It ended up being just fine, and I chauffered my mom around the state for the week.

We stopped in Castle Rock for some breakfast and shopping.  We then headed on towards Colorado Springs and made a spontaneous stop at Focus on the Family.  I'm so glad we did!  I hadn't been there since I was a little girl when my parents brought the whole family.  I didn't remember most of it, but I have so many memories of listening to Adventures in Odyssey. 

We wandered around, and it was so neat to hang out with Whit for the day.  I pretended to be a kid again, and I went down the slide. I was also excited to see that they brought back the magazine called, Brio.  This was a magazine that I loved to receive in the mail when I was in junior high and high school.  I even have a Brio Pen Pal, and we are still in touch today!

My uncle Billy and aunt Birdie live in Colorado Springs, and they were our first stop on the trip.  We were so blessed by their hospitality the few days that we stayed with them.  My cousin Jessie was also there, and it was so good to get to catch up with all of them.  We don't see them nearly enough.

Jessie was a fantastic uber driver ;) and carted us off to the Red Rocks Open Space for a morning of hiking on one of the days.  I absolutely love nature in Colorado.  I really wish the weather was cooperative enough here in Oklahoma to allow for hiking every day. That would be my choice of exercise.  There's just something about being in nature, in the mountains, that brings me closer to God. I'm in awe of the creation He made.

Looking over at Garden of the Gods.

Jessie is very observant. She was pointing out the little details, and I loved that!!

It was a beautiful day to get out and enjoy the mountain air.  We really enjoyed hanging out with them! 

On Wednesday morning, we left Colorado Springs and headed towards Breckenridge.  It just so happens that Breckenridge is one of my favorite little towns, and again, it holds a million memories for me.  We decided to head up to Peak 8 at the Ski Resort.  I'll also tell you that Breckenridge is my very favorite place to ski, but we don't ski there often because it's so expensive.  

The gondola begins at the parking lot in downtown Breck.  It's free, so we hopped on and rode to the top just to see what we could see.

We didn't stay up at the top very long, so we rode the gondola back down. Then we headed to the main street.  We had already planned to treat ourselves to Starbucks drinks. Priorities, right?!

We also knew that we were going to eat at Downstairs at Eric's.  That's our favorite restaurant to eat at, and it's such a fun atmosphere.

The town and the scenery are absolutely beautiful...no matter what time of year you visit!

I love how you can see the ski area in the background.

We stayed in Frisco for the night...it's cheaper than Breckenridge and only a few miles down the road.  It's easy access to I-70 as well.

The next day, we headed toward Estes Park. But there were several places we stopped along the way.  Georgetown is one of our favorite quick spots to stop.  It is the quaintest "village."

It's a tradition to take a picture in the middle of the street each time we visit!

We didn't really have plans on this trip.  We had a loose itinerary, and we knew where we were staying each night.  But we just stopped wherever we felt like it.  So as we were driving the back roads to Estes Park, we stopped at a beautiful sightseeing pull off.

I had never really driven in the mountains before.  The hairpin turns, the climb in elevation, the cars following too close for my comfort...that was all an adventure.

We kept traveling until we got to Winter Park.  We had decided that we were going to go alpine sliding.  I hadn't been since I was a kid, and we both think that Winter Park has better alpine sliding than Breck does.  It was actually a little more expensive than we thought it was going to be.  But hey! When at Winter Park...

We made it a challenge to see how many times we could get down the mountain to get our price per run at a reasonable number.  We ended up going down 5 times before it started raining. We still had quite a bit of driving ahead of us, and we weren't sure we wanted to wait until they could get the track dry.  So we ended up leaving.  But it was such a fun experience!!

On the chair lift up!

Here's a video of one of my runs!  If you ever get the opportunity to go Alpine Sliding, you should!  It's so much fun!

Tomorrow, I'll be sharing more about the second half of our trip!